Walter Pater

This provocative study suggests that Pater, usually thought of as a florid prose stylist and second-rate adjunct to the Esthetic Movement, is, in reality, an articulate prophet of the twentieth century. Pater's work, the book indicates, shows a consistent concern with the transmission of humanism from one generation to the next through the medium of art. The link in that transmission is the human image in a milieu—the appearance of man as manifested in painting, sculpture, prose, poetry, or dram